One Significant Ghost: Stories from Viet NamSaturday, November 19 at 2pmmore
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Icons for a New
CenturyMatt Ernst and Rob Roy

Artists
Matt Ernst and Rob Roy offer a look at the symbols that exemplify
a new era in our history. Half way through the first decade
of a new century and we can already count the conflicts that
mark this new millennium. According to the web-site Global
Security “much
of the world [is] consumed in armed conflict or cultivating an
uncertain peace. As of mid-2005, there were eight major Wars
under way (down from 15 in 2003), with as many as 24 “lesser
conflicts” ongoing with varying degrees of intensity.
These conflicts are fueled by racial, ethnic or religious animosities
as by ideological fervor.”

Cowboys, helicopters, fighter jets, oil storage tanks, gas pumps,
soldiers and guns are the simple graphics that tell a complex
story of desire, fear, insatiability and death. Yet, both these
artists resist from making direct political or moral judgments,
they simply reflect back to us images and objects from our everyday
experience.

Matt Ernst and Rob Roy engage and challenge
viewers by layering a multitude of meanings. These paintings
are not “narratives” in
the sense of telling a particular story but by using these disparate
symbols they nevertheless impart meaning and force the viewer
to ask questions about our society’s values, goals, methods
and policies.

Matt Ernst lives and works in New York City. He received his
degree from the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston. His work
has been exhibited in New York, Florence, Vienna and Barcelona.

Rob Roy lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Montserrat College
in Beverly. He received his MFA from Yale University, School
of Art and Architecture in 1971. His work is in numerous private
and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art in
New York.

The startling black and white photographs by Magnum photographer
Philip Jones Griffiths demonstrate for us the horrifying consequences
of using the chemical Agent Orange during the Viet Nam war. The
children in these photos were born almost 30 years since the US
withdrew its troops from that country but what remained was the
toxic chemical Dioxin which was used in the defoliant known as
Agent Orange. The genetic mutations caused by Agent Orange continue
to wage war against the civilians who continue to drink contaminated
water and grow food in the contaminated soil.

Agent Orange chronicles the lives of those poisoned
by the defoliant used to denude the forests and jungles of Viet
Nam. The defoliation military strategy was called “Operation Ranch Hand,” and
according to Griffiths’ book, took as its motto “Only
We Can Prevent Forests” that were applied to the sides of
the aircraft used to spray the deadly chemical. Defoliation, the “Chemical
Scythe,” affected huge swaths of land. Dioxin is one of the
most toxic substances ever produced and one that continues to impact
the lives of Vietnamese children today.

Viet Nam vets suffered from the exposure to this chemical as well,
contracting rare forms of cancer, lupus and other diseases but
the link to Agent Orange was initially strongly denied by the American
government but eventually $180 million dollars was awarded by the
manufacturers of the chemicals through the US Courts.

Dioxin contamination also affects the reproductive system, the
endocrine matrix, the immune system, and the nervous system. But
the most dramatic affect takes place in the womb as it alters the
cellular activity and produces deformed fetuses. In Viet Nam the
human toll continues to be ignored. Most babies die shortly after
birth but others live with missing or deformed limbs, mental retardation,
without eyes, with internal organs on the on the outside of their
bodies, spina bifida and cerebral palsy.

These photographs are Philip Jones Griffiths’ tribute
to their grace and fortitude.

Philip Jones Griffiths was born in Rhuddian, Wales in 1936. Griffiths
was studying pharmacy and working as a part-time photographer for The
Manchester Guardian, and the moved to The Observer newspaper.
He covered the Algerian war in 1962 and has since covered major
conflicts around the world.

In 1971 his groundbreaking book Vietnam, Inc. was published
and is widely recognized as changing US attitudes to the war.

Arthur W. Galston is the Eaton
Professor Emeritus of Botany in the Department of Biology at
Yale University and also Professor Emeritus of Forestry with
the School of Forestry and environmental Studies. The author
of more than 300 scientific articles in refereed journals and
more than 50 articles on science and public policy, Professor
Galston is a biologist specializing in chemical control of
plant growth. His concerns about the social impacts of science
led to his participating in a successful campaign to terminate
the spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam (1970), becoming a
charter member of the Hastings Center, his membership on the
Federation of American Scientists' Committee on Biological
Warfare, and his involvement in the Society for Social Responsibility
in Science, which he served as president in the mid 1970s.

One Significant
Ghost: Stories from Viet NamSaturday, November 19 at 2pm

Diane Fox will be at the Housatonic
Museum of Art Saturday, November 19 at 2pm to speak about her
work with the disabled poor including those suffering from the
effects of Agent Orange. This lecture is to augment the exhibition
of select black and white photographs from the book Agent
Orange: Collateral Damage in Viet Nam by Magnum photographer
Philip Jones Griffiths.

Diane
Fox, Teaching Fellow, Asian Studies program at Hamilton College
in Clinton, New York earned a master’s from Portland State
University and is working toward her doctorate at the University
of Washington. She was most recently coordinator of the Agent
Orange educational project for the Fund for Reconciliation and
Development. Fox has written for Education About Asia, Viet Nam
News and contributed to Synthetic Planet: Chemical Politics and
the Hazards of Modern Life. While at Portland State she taught
various courses on Viet Nam history.